1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to determining a meeting location, and in particular, to a method, apparatus, and article of manufacture for suggesting an interesting location for a group of persons to meet using a computer application.
2. Description of the Related Art
An intriguing problem in wireless consumer applications is to suggest an interesting location for a group of friends to meet (i.e., to compute a meeting/rendezvous location). When computing a meeting location, various factors should be taken into consideration. For example, the current location of all the members of the group should be taken into account. Additionally, it may be useful to consider travel distance/time for members of the group to reach the meeting location and/or the activity preference or inclinations of each/all the members of the group (e.g. do the members prefer outdoor sports like golf, or if they prefer to meet in a mall). Further, convergence or an acknowledgement of a significant divergence of interests within subgroups is useful.
Some of these same considerations apply when suggesting a blind date venue for two people who are meeting say for the first time, or to suggest an activity for a single user based on a previous activity profile.
The prior art methodology used by applications is for either the meeting coordinator, some meeting participants, and/or all of the meeting participants to examine the local yellow pages. Each individual then picks a favorite location. An n-squared (n2) communication then occurs between group members to establish a consensus and an agreed upon location.
Such a prior art method has significant limitations. For example, large amounts of data are transmitted over low bandwidth networks (e.g., via telephone calls) to each user in the group. Further, each user is required to manually navigate through the yellow pages categories and subcategories, and pick a favorite location. To eventually extract a labored consensus of the meeting location, an n-squared communication is required. Additionally, there is a high cost to the users in terms of performance, time, and also dollar cost for wireless airtime, service usage, etc.